Iain, are you trying to win a competition for the most impenetrable headline?Outside the Westminster village, who knows who Cision is/are?And which of the words in your headline are verbs, nouns or adjectives?If you want to win the Orwell prize next year, you need to be articulate not just loquacious.

they're responding to a need from PR people to have an 'off the shelf' list of blogs to send press releases to as opposed to genuinely trying to map networks of influence and look for ways to participate

One of the problems with the Lib Dem love-bombing strategy is that it may sound good in theory at Westminster, but on the streets around the country it is very different.

Anybody who has been involved in any sort of campaign involving the Lib Dems will have stories about their tricks. One of my favourites is informing voters their councillor didn't turn up at an important meeting...without mentioned said councillor had died 12 hours before.

And it follow that there are still Conservatives about, though I've no idea about the number, who would lend their vote to Labour if the only alternative was a Lib Dem being elected.

Anonymous 2:30 PM: I'll have you know that I'm a major fan of Iain Dale's Diary. Clearly he needs to be rebutted in a good humoured way for at least some of his wonky mutterings, but Iain is the Pope of Bloggery and must be respected at all times. Could do with playing down his obsession with yours truly.

Hilarious that Iain should be dissing the methodology of somebody else's polls, lists or surveys. He's probably more annoyed that Bloggerheads is at 15 but doesn't like to give Manic the Oxygen of publicity.

Thanks for taking a look at our list, Iain, and thanks, all, for the feedback.

A couple of specific points:

Morus, as you say, our first step was to combine traffic with a proxy for search visibility. While we'd like the results to reflect "influence", we recognise we've taken only a small step in that direction, and that there's a long, long way to go.

Mark, "off the shelf" blog lists really are the last thing we want to produce - we're pretty explicit about that in the press release.

And IanVisits, you should know we agonised about the classification of b3ta too. Should have agonised a bit more over the classification of Guido...

What are your views on caravanning? Or witch craft in the Niger Delta? Or Toenails Robinson?

"Morus, as you say, our first step was to combine traffic with a proxy for search visibility. While we'd like the results to reflect "influence", we recognise we've taken only a small step in that direction, and that there's a long, long way to go."

What on earth does that mean? You've discovered a new way to measure blogs? No you haven't you cock. Go back to the drawing board or simply copy the real list from Wikio

Most-popular, ie traffic-wise, there are separate measures that should be reflected. How many people reading, how many times does the average reader come back, how long do they spend reading it. Some merged reader*seconds/visit might manage that.

Influence is a completely different beast - I'm not sure much is gained by mixing a measure of influence with one of traffic. Things are influential if they are talked about on other blogs *if those blogs are influential* - as I understand it this is the path Wikio and Technorati follow, though I'm far from convinced by those either. MSM mentions suggest influence, but without beating about the bush, influence comes from being read by influential people. I'm not sure that is so easy to measure.

I don't agree with measuring number of posts as a factor on any measure. Some posters post once article a day, some post tens of short posts a day, some post only a couple of pieces a week, but they a massive treatises. I'm not sure volume is an indication of influence or popularity - it has an effect on those two, but is not a useful measure of them.

I'm also not convinced that comparing categories of blogs is useful - any more than the comparative sales figures of jeeps v smoothies.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Good luck with wherever you take it next.